Any community, regardless of size, generates its own individual system of law, and only when such a system of law is in fact substantially just and substantially effective is the community able to function. Until recently, the legal systems within institutions of higher education have missed this point because for generations the traditional power holders in the academic community have gone largely unchallenged. As a result, systems of law active in academic communities or subcommunities are in accordance with the most traditional and strict ideas of fair play. This document analyzes the nature of communities generally in order to determine both the extent to which university environments reflect these characteristics and the ways in which they may be useful in identifying and responding to the problems of the modern university. The process of analysis begins with the idea of the communitization process in academia, where the end product is both academic and a community, a small society and a small political order. Every such community must, either explicitly or otherwise, define for itself its own special nature and purposes and its own relationship to the general academic tradition of which it is a part. (Author/HS)